Film - The Death of Stalin: Fans of The Thick of It's lampooning of New Labour will notice parallels. The Stalinists, like the Blairites, are egotistical buffoons, completely isolated from the working class

Non-fiction review - 'Spain in our hearts': Left-leaning academic Adam Hochschild's remarkable latest work collects the visceral stories of Americans and Canadians who fought fascism as part of the 'International Brigades' in Spain's 1936-9 civil war

The Russian revolution a hundred years ago is still a terrifying calamity - for billionaire thieves, warmongers and their political defenders. But for the working class, it meant a boom in living standards, freedom and imagination.

60 years ago, at the 20th conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956, first secretary Nikita Khrushchev denounced the dictatorial crimes of Joseph Stalin who had died in 1953.

Police violence must be condemned: Brutal policing caused a riot in the downtown district of Mong Kok on the first night of the Chinese New Year, 8 February. Socialists on the ground give an eyewitness report.

Commemorations marking the 70th anniversary 'victory in Europe' (VE) day recently took place in Britain (and throughout the world) with establishment dignitaries saluting veteran service men and women who liberated Europe from the clutches of fascism

The clash between the central leadership of the IST - notably the Socialist Workers Party - and their one-time American 'section' the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) also highlighted the deficiencies in their intervention in mass movements...

If they were to answer that North Vietnam was more 'progressive', then how to explain their position at the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, when the liquidation of the planned economy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union was, for them, not a great negative historical turning point...